


yesterday

by hypophrenia



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), POV Original Character, POV Outsider, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, i'm very ambiguous about it u can't tell if it was requited, implied/referenced romaguda, no lostbelts we die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 06:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18162272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypophrenia/pseuds/hypophrenia
Summary: Fujimaru Ritsuka is seven parts mystery, two parts an inhuman facade, and one part paradoxically fragile, like the wrong word spoken right can break apart her easy smile. You think it'd be best for everyone if you watched your mouth sometimes.





	yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> im gonna be honest my favorite trope of all time is for sure outsider pov stuff. im looking at u garden of light extra from banana fish that was _the_ shit. which is why i made an oc to go full on outsider pov. i will go feral for this kinda stuff
> 
> as always i'm so sorry about my shitty writing. irl friends don't interact leave me and my bad fgo fics alone

Fuyuki wasn’t a perfect city. No one expected it to be. It was something about the atmosphere, fraught with something somber no one could name, something about the colorful characters that popped up all around like little mushrooms. The more bright they appeared, the more poisonous they could be under their illusions of normalcy.

It’s not perfect, but you stay anyways. So does everyone else. For a lack of words, you’ll say it’s because of the way you grew up in the thick, stagnant air, and how such a quiet place is inescapable, sometimes. There’s a college in the Shinto area which isn’t anything special, but for lack of better ones you attended anyways. The last of your family moved out, and so you rented out a small apartment five minutes away by foot and made the decision to live out the rest of your days quietly.

Fujimaru Ritsuka is the new transfer student that dazzles everyone two weeks into the new year. Twenty, built with lean, corded muscle, and made up of terrifying charisma, she was like a cool breeze that eased away the heaviness of the city. 

Fuyuki isn’t, wasn’t, and never will be known for its sights or education or benefits in any way. Fujimaru Ritsuka is an anomaly in the otherwise peaceful and uneventful progression in the lives of everyone normal, and she sticks out in a way that highlights more than just her bright hair.

It’s like how the world missed one year, how Fuyuki always goes through events that never match up, but no one has anything else besides thin excuses to believe. It’s like how Fujimaru always spaces out in class, hates being surprised, keeps looking sad for no obvious reason.

You don’t get her. You really don’t, but you think you have some idea. Fujimaru Ritsuka is this: an enigma, a mess of nerves and instinct, a hollowed out remnant of who she used to be. But it’s like no one else sees her as more than a pretty distraction, a mystery to dig apart.

“So, why’d you come to Fuyuki?” Amane has spent her entire life here, as you have. You went to Homurahara together, and you know her well enough to understand she’s always bored and always curious. And she has no filter from her thoughts to her mouth. “Everyone’s got a story when they _choose_ to move over to somewhere are boring as here.”

“Dunno,” Fujimaru replies, just as easily and cheeky as ever, “thought I’d get some sightseeing in. Didn’t think I’d get into some big name college, so I came over here. What d’you think, don’t I fit in just fine?”

“Sure,” Amane scoffs, “just as well as a fish out of water. Have I mentioned Emiya? You look the same; redhead, got the same nose—”

She balks a little at Emiya, and you wonder, really wonder, what connection she has to the nice underclassman who helped anyone who asked.

“—same kind of weirdness as him. Got some sort of blood relation?” Amane rambles a lot, but she’s always been perceptive when it doesn’t come to people and moods. You think so a little, too, but you can’t see what she’s talking about. 

“I’ve never met this Emiya in my life,” Fujimaru says, smooth and easy. But her hands wander, twist around the ring on her finger. She smiles a touch too wide, though Amane doesn’t catch that. “Introduce me to him?”

Amane’s attention is caught only by the ring, a simple gold band. But it’s around her left middle finger, and leave it up to her to catch that. Amane has never had a filter, never thinks her words through, so she says:

“Hey, you engaged or something?” You see it, too, and you think it’s a rather simple thing, nothing extraordinary, but she touches it like a lifeline, and Amane can see a little of that too.

Fujimaru pauses and you know Amane has struck something, something that she might as well drop before the illusion of normality Fujimaru’s weaved breaks up, but Fujimaru only smiles after a moment too long.

“Or something,” she says. “From a friend. I thought it looked nicest on my middle finger.”

Twist, twist. Her expression never changes, and Amane doesn’t look down again.

When Amane finally leaves, you get up with Fujimaru. You live in the same apartment complex, and it’s an unspoken agreement to walk home together. You never talk too much, but she can, and she does so with bubbly ease. You don’t overlook how she never talks about her, never anything that begins to unravel the puzzle that is her.

“I’ve only donated blood,” you say, when she asks about if you’ve ever fancied yourself a hero or something of the sort. “Not that heroic, and only a little.”

Something clicks in her eyes, and she blinks at you. It’s almost too fast to catch, but since she walked into psychology you haven’t looked away. 

“I’ve donated blood too,” she says, like she’s telling you the truth behind the holy grail in mythology. Wistful, almost sad, and it’s another piece of the puzzle that jams and doesn’t fit in. “Just a pint.”

“I see,” you tell her, and the conversation dies out. When you look back at her, she’s looking elsewhere, eyes glazed over. 

You don’t say anything the rest of the way back.

\---

Despite her words against Amane’s, you don’t think Fujimaru ever really planned to meet Emiya Shirou. He’s one of those people everyone knows, one way or another, but sort of like a little secret of Fuyuki’s. An ordinary person whom everyone likes, to some extent—perhaps strained by how he seems so unrealistically selfness.

You say people like him, but maybe that’s just you and Amane. You like him perfectly fine, even if he’s a little empty looking sometimes. Amane likes him because he was always polite with her.

But you’re with Fujimaru on a Saturday, and she sees a place you recognize only because you’re a faithful local. She pushes her way into Copenhagen and there stands Emiya Shirou, in the flesh with a sturdy broom in hand.

“Oh, senpai,” he says, perhaps out of habit, greeting you with a slight nod. “How are you?”

“Pretty good,” you say back, and that usually emcompasses your normal conversations. You turn to Fujimaru, about to introduce her, but pause when you see her expression.

Complicated, brows slightly furrowed. She’s staring a little too hard, and you think you’d heard her mention off hand she likes older men with stable jobs, so you’re sure Emiya really isn’t her type. If you didn't know any better, you'd think she was actually interested.

“Fujimaru?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, hey. I’m Fujimaru Ritsuka, nice to meet you.” She’s always been loose with her smiles, and she flashes one now, seeming to all the world just a normal girl casually saying hi.

“Emiya Shirou, nice to meet you too. Can I help you guys?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’m not old enough to drink yet if this really is a bar, but I’ll definitely be back sometime.”

“Of course. See you around?” 

“Yeah, see you.” Fujimaru manages this time with a little less ease than you’re used to her exerting. You follow her out, just in time to run into one of Emiya’s persistent harem members.

“Oh, senpai,” Tohsaka Rin also says, repeating Emiya’s words. She turns to Fujimaru, though, and her eyes seem to narrow. “Who might this be?”

“Fujimaru Ritsuka, a pleasure,” your companion repeats, and for once she seems to fully lose her touch for a moment, eyes soft enough to melt. In a bad, puddle of tears sort of way.

“Likewise. See you, senpai,” she directs to you, and enters Copenhagen. 

And with the ordeal over, Fujimaru seems to relax a little, and then her expression closes and you can read very little once more. 

“Well,” she says, as if just registering your presence, “maybe it’d be best if we just watched a movie at home.”

You don’t veto her idea, but all the same, you don’t forget the look on Fujimaru’s face when confronted with Emiya and Tohsaka, and you think there’s an awful lot you don’t understand about your new friend.

\---

Two weeks later, you’re with her at the library and one of the newer librarians, a woman with short hair and a faulty, unpracticed smile that explains how little experienced she is with customer service appears. Fujimaru doesn’t do a spit-take or anything like that—her eyes drift to the woman’s arm and tighten.

“Can I help you?” the librarian says.

“Do you have any mythology books on Zoroastrianism?” Fujimaru innocently asks, and you watch the woman do her own rendition of the perfected Fujimaru double-take.

\---

About a year into your friendship, you still don’t know why Fujimaru came to Fuyuki, of all places. You still don’t use her first name, she still doesn’t say anything personal, and every time you happen to hit a sore topic the ring around her finger twists.

She doesn’t take it off, but at the same time she treats it with such fragility and carefulness you wonder why she keeps it on in the first place. It’s another one of those things that you don’t think you’ll ever really understand about her, who seems so lost and sad even you feel something akin to pity for her.

“My sister’s coming over,” you tell her, while you’re sitting in a cafe together. “She’s just in the area, and wanted to say hi. Is that okay?”

“Sure, no problem,” she says, sipping at her coffee. “It’d be nice to meet the in-laws.”

She’s stayed over at your apartment so much she jokes about being married—you don’t forget how she fumbles with her ring, how she’s always too distant. You don’t love her, not in that way, and you suspect she thinks the same. It’s why she jokes about it so much.

“Hey!” Your sister has always been the louder one. Your parents always said she had the bigger lungs of the two of you, though privately confided with laughter that you had probably inherited the bigger brain. It was a little exaggeration, of course, but children always grow up hearing one or two.

She skids right to a stop when she makes eye contact with Fujimaru, and you see the way they both take the other in, not a friend of a friend, but familiar, uncomfortable, too much like they’re caught in the glaring headlights of a car.

“Hey,” your sister repeats, though it’s quieter, and directed at you. Carefully, like she’s scared of startling the person across from you, who acts like she’s seen a ghost.

You can tell when you’re not needed, so you get up, much to the discomfort the two and their pleading stares.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” you say, which is a complete lie, and all three of you know it. But no one says anything when you get up and leave, and only when you lock yourself in a stall do you finally breathe and press your forehead into your hands.

You leave ten minutes later, just in time to hear the tail end of a conversation you’re not equipped to understand.

“Lord El-Melloi II sends his regards. He thought you’d be here, even though I didn’t believe him. Really…”

“He always did know me well,” Fujimaru says, and you can see a twinkle of something in her eyes that dims a little too soon. 

“He never went into details about it. I was thinking—” Your sister stops when she sees you, and she draws back whatever words wanted to say. “Well, anyways, that’s all I needed to say.”

Your sister meets your eyes, and so does Fujimaru, who draws back and doesn’t look in your direction anymore.

“I just remembered there was something I needed to do. See you.” She smiles at you, at your sister, then makes her swift exit without looking back, back straight enough to almost fool you into thinking she’s behaving as normally.

“Sit down,” your sister says. “I never told you this, but since she’s involved, I guess there’s no point in keeping you out.”

“I think I get the gist of it,” you say, but you sit down anyways. 

“You _think_. Listen—Fujimaru Ritsuka is something unprecedented. No one’s done what she has, and no one’s been able to. You should stay on your guard. She looks cute, but she’s just as capable of killing you five different ways—”

“I know,” you tell her. “I’ve known for a while. I know I’ve never been involved in Dad’s side of the family, but we were raised the same.”

She hesitates, which is how you know you’ve made a good point because she’s normally raring to spit out words. Quantity over quality. She even seems to think before she speaks again, and it’s with much reluctance on her part.

“She hasn’t done anything wrong. In some perspectives, at least.”

“Waver seems to treat her nicely, despite being, well, him.”

Your sister shoots you a glare. “You know he hates being called that. In any case, yeah, that’s true. They’ve got some history, but I don’t know it. I don’t know if anyone knows it, besides them.”

“Right.” You let that steep in your mind for a brief moment. “What about the ring?”

She really thinks hard this time, most likely evaluating if you’re qualified enough to hear whatever world-ending information it might be.

“...Noble Phantasm,” she said. “I’ve heard rumors. That thing she’s wearing? It’s likely a fragment of a _Noble Phantasm_.”

“From a Servant?”

“Exactly the one from a Servant, what other Noble Phantasms are there?” Your sister scowls. “Wearing something with potential destructive power so casually, _playing_ with it—”

“Do you know which Servant it’s from?” You break her tirade, mostly because you know she won’t stop if you don’t nip it in the bud, partially because you’re genuinely curious. She swallows again, but the gossip in her can’t resist.

“You’re familiar with King Solomon, right? The son of David, given wisdom by God…”

“So you’re saying she was contracted with—” You don’t know the context, what led up to this, anything about Fujimaru Ritsuka, but the more your sister spills the more you become intrigued. The Magus community has always been distant in your eyes, and you’ve never bothered learning more than the basics. Something about a Holy Grail War, something about summoning from the Throne of Heroes…

“Nothing like that,” your sister quickly said. “But King Solomon was given ten rings, and from what I've heard…”

You think about how the ring’s on her left hand’s middle finger, and wonder. Across from you, your sister fiddles with her phone, before sighing and getting up.

“It's starting to get late,” she murmured. “I didn't come for you or her.” 

“Right.” You say your goodbyes and watch her leave from your seat, and nursing your cold cup of coffee, you wonder again about the neverending mysteries surrounding Fujimaru.

When you get home it's night and Fujimaru’s waiting outside, hands in her pockets. 

“Hey,” she says, and for once the confidence is stripped clean from her face and the vulnerability a real twenty-one year old should have rests on her face.

“Want to come in?” She nods and you lead her inside your apartment, fix her a cup of tea, and sit down with your own mug in the empty space next to her on the couch.

Fujimaru, as much as the facade she weaves says, is not an open person. She never speaks of her serious concerns, and never approaches a serious topic first. You know this, so you speak. “I'm only half Japanese. My mom was a normal Japanese citizen, and my dad was a European guy from a line of Magi.” That's what catches her attention. “I never inherited his bloodline, but my sister did, so when our parents died she moved overseas with our relatives who marveled over her magecraft potential. I stayed.”

You give her a chance to soak in your words, and she does, twisting her ring and running her fingers over the back of her right hand, as if looking for something that didn't exist.

When she doesn't respond after five minutes, you get up to get her a blanket, as you always do on the days she used to come over with eyes that never focused on the present. She resembles, now, how she did during those days, but she reaches out to grab your hand anyways, to pull you back towards her.

“I fell in love once,” she says, as you slowly sit back down beside her. “He was older than me, a true coward, but he was the head of Chal...of our medical facility, and even though he feared death just like anyone else, he…”

She doesn't say anything after that, fingers running over her ring, over the scars on her knuckles and the smooth skin on the back of her hand. 

And because you didn't know what to say, knowing with some amount of certainty King Solomon’s Noble Phantasm and the year missing from human record was involved, you were quiet.

“Thanks,” she finally sniffled, though she didn't cry outright.

“No problem.” Amane was right, in some ways. Fujimaru Ritsuka was someone you couldn't hope to fully understand as she was, but the little fragment she offered was enough. 

She fell in love, once. You'd ask Waver and taller, tan Emiya, Tohsaka and Matou, and even Fujimura-sensei had a wistful little glint in her eyes but none said a thing. 

“Maybe she's into cowards who can give it their all sometimes,” Lancer says to you when you visit under the pretense of getting some flowers at a reputably decent place, though you get the feeling he’s seen right through that. “Fujimaru Ritsuka, right? She’s a good girl. If she loved someone, she’d love someone kind to her.” And maybe that’s all there is to it.

King Solomon must've been someone wonderful, you think.


End file.
